Emelia 👸🏻1d ago

Friendly reminder: last year I built FediMod FIRES, a protocol and reference server implementation for sharing moderation data.

I haven't yet been able to get anyone to adopt it or even signal intent to adopt. But regularly I see people complaining about the lack of data sharing when it comes to moderation, especially for combating spam, scams, and harassment. The tool is there, please use it!

Whilst I'm not actively working on FediMod FIRES this quarter, I did apply in November for a grant to continue that work, and last I heard a few weeks ago is that the grant made it to the next stage, so I may have some money again to fund development.

It's not 1.0.0 yet, because I decided it needed more work for me to be happy to call it that, but it is usable!

Installation is also super simple for data producers, literally two commands on debian or ubuntu boxes.

Learn more: https://fires.fedimod.org/manuals/reference-server/

#moderation #fediblock #administration

FIRES Reference Server | FediMod FIRES

Fediverse moderation Intelligence Replication Endpoint Server

FediMod FIRES
Show threadMax Lee1d ago
@thisismissem
First time hearing about it tbh (and I don't admin large instances anyways 😅) but will take a look at it, sounds like it could be useful.
Show threadEmelia 👸🏻1d ago
@the_moep yeah, it's been difficult to get the word out because I don't have a particularly large following.
Show threadMax Lee

@thisismissem I took a quick look at it and there are two things I'm wondering about:

  • Can this already integrate with Mastodon's FASP? If not, is that planed?
  • How are identities of moderated actors/instances as well as the moderating instances protected? As far as I can tell all of that information seems to be provided in clear text which imo would result in retaliation actions being taken against the people putting an instance on the list. Something like this has happened in the Minecraft community on global banlist projects and seems to be (in a lesser form) an issue with Bluesky's public blocklists as well. (And in the email-space Spamhaus gets attacked a lot as well)
Mar 26 at 12:57pmWeb
Show threadEmelia 👸🏻1d ago

@the_moep okay, a lot of questions!

1) FediMod FIRES is not related to Mastodon's FASP protocol. You shouldn't need an active connection to a FIRES server to process incoming activities.

2) Moderation data is shared publicly. Your server needs a copy of that data in order to take action. Moderation data providers can share as much or as little data about their operations as they desire.

3) The only way to not make the moderation data clear text would be by using Differential Privacy, and I absolutely do not have the cryptography knowledge to implement that.

4) Private datasets have been requested as a feature. Need to figure out access control. Existing datasets are all public.

Hope that helps.

Show threadEmelia 👸🏻1d ago
@the_moep FediMod FIRES is more parallel to Bluesky's Labeler infrastructure rather than blocklists